Blog Marketing: 5 Important Things You Need To Consider

Blog Marketing

With the advent of WordPress, getting a blog started has become and extremely straight forward process. Couple that with the abundance of themes and plugins you can now get a fully functional, great looking, feature-rich website in literally a matter of minutes. All you need to do is write the content and off you go! But one thing that hasn’t gotten easier, in fact, it’s got much harder, is marketing. Getting traffic to your blog is one of the biggest challenges you will ever face as a blogger. Out of the millions of blogs out there only 1% or less get any significant traffic. Think about that for a second. It’s tough, it’s a challenge, but armed with the right information, a heap of time and a bunch of desire – you can become successful.

This article isn’t going to be a step by step guide as to how to achieve traffic. It won’t reveal any hidden tricks or secrets that lead to you dominating your sector and blowing your competition out of the water. It won’t make you thousands of dollars in your first month. But, what it will do is give you an oversight into the various elements you need to consider if you want to make your blog a success.

01. Content is King

Whilst having a nice design and a fantastically functional blog is important, it’s not as important as your content. As they say, content is king and it is truly the one element that can make or break your project. People come to your blog to read what you’ve written, to find information on something and that information is what will make people come back to your blog time and time again or at least share it to someone else can view. Good unique content can also yield traffic. When the likes of Google caches your content and someone else finds it, the traffic yield can be truly immense and this can convert to profit.

02. Design Makes the Blog

As mentioned above, design isn’t the be all and end all but it too can make or break your blog. You might have the best content in the world but if someone lands on your site and your design is hideous then they might simply click back and not even read all of your hard work. The right design gives your blog the professional/authoritative look it will need to convey your information in the best possible way. Fortunately, designs in the form of templates are available in abundance, especially for the likes of WordPress and given the level of competition you can now pick up seriously high end designs for less than $10! As I say, there is no excuse for poor design.

03. Sharing is Caring

You’ve probably heard this term but it couldn’t be more true. Now more than ever. Getting shared socially can yield huge rewards in terms of traffic. Especially if you’ve written a highly viral piece of content. Having a social presence in general is also equally important as more and more people are using social networks to find information they want rather than traditional search engines etc.

04. Retain That Audience

It’s hard work to get a single visitor to your website these days so once you do you need to make sure you maximize that hit. Either sell them something, give them a reason to come back or make sure they at least have the opportunity to share what you’ve written in the hope that another person sees it and then another and then another etc. You should put as much effort in retaining your audience as you do to get it in the first place which is where a lot of people go wrong. They think it’s all about getting the visitor and don’t really care about what they’re shown when they get there.

05. Monetization – One for later…

This is important if the goal of your blog is to make money but it shouldn’t be a priority in the early days. There is nothing worse than seeing a blog which gets no traffic plastered in adverts. It doesn’t make sense and can be off putting for your visitors. Concentrate on building an audience and giving that audience a good user experience – worry about the income later. If you have the audience the income will always be there.

Conclusion:

Hopefully this article has stirred some thought and hopefully it hasn’t put you off becoming a blogger! In truth, whilst it is difficult, lots of people success and it’s not just people with time, people with money or tech-savvy “experts” is everyone from millionaires to stay at home single mums. The key is to find a niche, find out what you need to do to achieve success and quite simply, get on with it!